


Kissing Booth

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Read My Lips [4]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-19
Updated: 2016-03-19
Packaged: 2018-05-27 17:18:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6293080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: Any, Any, <i>Be my youth / My kissing booth / My little sweet tooth / My beauty and truth</i>. Rodney learns about being in a relationship with John Sheppard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kissing Booth

Rodney had had a few (failed) relationships with men, so he was generally savvy enough to understand that dating a man wasn't the same as dating a woman, and the conventional gifts for things like birthdays and Valentine's Day didn't apply. He spent more time than he cared to admit, asking Lorne what he should get for John for special occasions (Lorne had been John's interpreter all through college when Lorne was in the ROTCc and again when John first signed on with the SGC, and he knew John the best, but he did his best to keep their relationship professional, and as it turned out, Lorne was even more clueless about dating men, because he was apparently straight).  
  
Because John was a rebel, from the tips of his spiky hair to the toes of his casual Converse sneakers, he disregarded special occasions entirely. Valentine's Day? Passed without comment. But two weeks later, John gave Rodney the very last brownie to be had for two months till the next supply run on the Daedalus, and to hear some of the KP marines tell it, John had gone to great lengths to obtain and guard it till Rodney was done in the lab. Given how some of the marines acted about chocolate, Rodney knew what John had done was above and beyond what most (lovers? Partners? Boyfriends?) would have done. Especially since Rodney's sweet tooth was notorious and the KP marines would deliberately make something with citrus in it if he'd ticked them off.  
  
John refused any gifts for his own birthday and instead presented Rodney with a drawstring bag of tokens that looked like they'd been harvested from kiddie arcades in Vegas.  
  
Rodney stared at the bag, confused, and John held out a hand.  
  
Rodney blinked at him, asked, "What am I supposed to do?" (John could read lips.)  
  
John waggled his outstretched hand meaningfully.  
  
Rodney was still confused.  
  
"Give him one of the coins," Zelenka grumbled.  
  
"But he gave them to me."  
  
"Do it, Rodney," Zelenka snapped.  
  
So Rodney placed one of the coins in John's outstretched hand.  
  
John leaned in and kissed Rodney briefly. Rodney was too surprised to protest, because kissing John was nice, but neither of them were much for PDA, but then someone hollered "Sheppard!" and Lorne stomped on the floor and John was gone. In the weeks to come, John would swing by the lab, pluck a coin out of the bag, give Rodney a brief kiss, and then continue on his way. After a particularly harrowing narrow escape from the Wraith on another planet, Rodney found John in the lab, and he gave John a coin with shaking hands, and John cradled him close and kissed him till the shaking stopped.  
  
When the coins ran out, John kept kissing him, and that was more than okay, because Rodney liked it when John kissed him.  
  
Rodney wasn't sure he liked it when John told him be was beautiful. The first time was when they were lying in bed, limbs intertwined, basking in the afterglow, and John reached up, traced his finger around the outline of Rodney's face, mouthed _beautiful_. Rodney nodded, but he didn't believe it, not that first time or the times after, till John did it again, and when Rodney hesitated, pressed a finger to his lips and added, _truth_. After that, whenever John signed _truth_ what he meant was _you're beautiful_ and Rodney maybe started to believe.  
  
He almost didn't believe it when he received a present on his own birthday. It showed up on his desk, a little envelope with his name on it in John's handwriting, even though John was nowhere to be seen. Inside was a flash drive and a warning to watch the contents alone.  
  
Rodney remembered the first time he saw John dancing and his pulse stuttered in anticipation.  
  
He hadn't expected the video to be of John, sixteen and gangly, hints of the beautiful man he was in the adolescent smirk and artfully messy hair. He hadn't expected to hear John's voice, not quite at its final depth, as he talked to someone off-camera, threw his head back and laughed. He hadn't expected to see John playing a guitar and singing old Johnny Cash songs with his friends, but he supposed, after the Wraith and everything else the universe had piled on them, he should have expected to hear John say, "Man, if I lost one of my senses? Hearing would be the worst. I can't live without music."


End file.
